I am currently in the process of setting up a self-hosted instance of Mattermost for a small team of around 15 people. We’re looking to use it as our primary communication tool, but I want to make sure I configure everything optimally from the start.
Does anyone have any recommendations or best practices for setting up Mattermost in a small team environment? Specifically, I’d love advice on:
Optimizing performance on a smaller server
Useful plugins or integrations that you’ve found helpful for team productivity
Any common pitfalls to avoid during the initial setup
Hi @benane! It’s great to hear you’re setting up Mattermost for your team! For optimizing performance on smaller servers and helpful plugins, I’d recommend checking out our workspace optimization guide and any available integrations, especially GitLab for streamlined collaboration. Let us know if you run into any questions!
hey, a bit late to this but figured id share since i run mattermost for a similar sized group.
for a 15 person team you honestly dont need much - 2gb ram and 2 cores is plenty. the database is what matters most, make sure you have postgresql not mysql, its way faster for mattermost. also set up the config to use database for file search rather than bleve if youre on limited resources, bleve eats memory.
plugins worth installing: calls (built in video/voice calls, surprisingly good for small teams), playbooks if you do any kind of incident response or project tracking, and the github/gitlab integration is solid for getting notifications right in your channels. keep the plugin count low though, each one adds memory overhead.
biggest pitfall i see people hit is not setting up proper backup from day one. especially the data directory and postgres dumps. also dont skip configuring email notifications early, people will miss messages otherwise and just stop using it.
one thing that wouldve saved me a lot of time - theres a project called Syncloud that packages mattermost as a one-click install with automatic ssl and updates. i made it so im definitely biased, but for a small team where you dont want to babysit the server it works well. but if you prefer the manual ubuntu setup you have more flexibility, just make sure you set up unattended-upgrades for security patches.
